We Have Seen the Corn has been published and is now available for purchase at Kelsay Books:
and Amazon Books:
poetry chapbook
What They’re Sayin’…
Preliminary words of praise for my forthcoming poetry collection, We Have Seen the Corn!
I’m so grateful to d., Candice, and Mary for gracing my book’s back cover with such wise, insightful, enthusiastic words of praise for these poems! We Have Seen the Corn will be available for order via the Kelsay Books website and Amazon soon…
From her invented “In-titled” form, to frolicking word play and elegant word choice, Ms. Harper demonstrates an uncommon command of every line and syllable in this evocative collection. Here, the poet is fully present, and the work is stunning. We Have Seen the Corn is deeply personal work: the poet reckoning with “the notion of a self / inhabited too briefly.” She asks, “why and why and why,” bringing us again and again to the “brown brink” of grief. Deftly, the poet titrates between the beauty and “unspeakable devastation” of nature: “Indigo Bunting,” cicadas mating, and “the womb’s hush” counterbalance grief and loss. Here amid the “sweet sultry folds” of an abiding love, there is exquisite tenderness, as the poet reveals herself, unabashed, shedding every husk.
~ d. ellis phelps, EIC: formidable woman sanctuary, author, of failure & faith.
Stephanie L. Harper’s We Have Seen the Corn envelops the reader in a potent diorama of its poet’s world. Harper’s grief in discovering her beloved husband’s illness, though palpable, serves not to suffocate but rather, in a highly conscious, poetically masterful manner, to elucidate the indescribable subject of unbearable pain. At this work’s crux, Harper asks, “Can I grieve?” and her unvarnished feelings unfurl before us, in response. We Have Seen the Corn is a ravishing compilation of high craft without pretention. Harper’s poetic voice possesses a poignant pulse and unforgettable reach into our inner psyche.
~ Candice Louisa Daquin, Senior Editor Indie Blu(e) Publishing and Raw Earth Ink, author, Tainted by the Same Counterfeit.
In her new poetry collection, We Have Seen the Corn, Stephanie L. Harper captures the natural world’s beauty as she uniquely sees it. The poet invites us to share in her wonderment at goats, plants, birds, and people, whose presence in her life “[burnishes] the sparse bright / sprinkle of grass (…) over into the / universe of shimmer.” Harper galvanizes our imaginations for an epic journey through her poetic world: When the Slumbering Entomophile chronicles for us a steamy cicada tryst in a lilac tree, we want to be voyeurs in this dream, too. And when we encounter Harper’s “golden orb spider,” whose “unseen murmuring, / spinning silence / (…) glistens / in the dawn’s sun-tinged tears,” we want to be there, listening.
~ Mary Sexson, author, Her Addiction, An Empty Place at the Table.
New Chapbook Announcement!
Conspiring Skyward by Cameren Harper
I’m super pleased and proud to announce that I have a poetry chapbook collection forthcoming with Kelsay Books: We Have Seen the Corn will be entering production in May 2025, and will be available for purchase soon thereafter (Don’t worry, I will keep you updated!). By the way, the gorgeous graphic above is the illustration my immensely talented and generous daughter, Cameren Harper, created expressly for use as the cover of We Have Seen the Corn, for which I’m inexpressibly grateful!
This little collection has been a long time in the making and most of the individual poems have been previously published (including the title poem, below*), but what I’m most thrilled about is this opportunity to amass and share with you all these words of grief, growth, joy, and celebration into one beautiful entity dedicated to my husband, inspiration, love of my life, brilliant poet, and most extraordinary (and freaking adorable!) of human beings, the one and only, inimitable Robert Okaji (idk, you may’ve heard of him…).
I’ve been sitting on this news for quite a while, but I’ve decided that there couldn’t be a better time to make such an announcement than during our revered National Poetry Month, so the cat is officially clawing her way out of the bag!
Thank you so much for sharing this poetic moment with me! And stay tuned for more info as it comes available!
*We Have Seen the Corn
with twelve-hundred miles
of fields in our wake
I am aching
to slip among those stalks & touch
their silk-topped ears all conspiring
skyward now
to beguile the birds’ cries from the brim
of that thundercloud
burgeoning
over the Nebraska plain
let’s pull off the interstate so we can
stretch our legs for a bit
Indiana will wait
split those crows’ itinerant
congregation there & park
right alongside the unending green
I want to enter
its late-sun-streams sifting the sky motes
crimson-gold & stirring
the cicadas’ whirrs & earwigs’ scuttles in the loam
to a viscous chorus
& with my hand clasped in yours press
another lush measure
into our song’s sweet & sultry folds
~STEPHANIE L. HARPER
Review of Stephanie L. Harper’s The Death’s Head’s Testament
WOW!
The inimitably brilliant, insightful, and sensitive Daniel Paul Marshall has written a gorgeous review of my new chapbook, The Death’s-Head’s Testament! Please take a look, and consider pre-ordering a copy for just $6.50 each!
What a Patriot Dreams
What a Patriot Dreams
I saw the flags come down—
their masts falling like the trees
flattened by shockwaves
in those clips of old footage
from military nuclear bomb tests,
spliced into high school history documentaries.
They weren’t projected celluloid etchings
that teenagers confined to plastic chairs
could summarily cancel
with one hand motioning No
in the universal vernacular…
Caught in a wash of floodlights
on the indigo summer dusk,
the red-white-blue swaths crushed
in on themselves like torn parachutes,
& all vanished at once—deposed
by morning’s first, grainy insinuations
that breached the blinds’ periphery,
& accreted into a single, silent force
creeping along my bedroom walls,
as if to thwart illumination:
In this country of my own
birth & citizenship, I’ve, in turn,
given birth to two, precious children—
my riven heart’s two halves now trussed
in a spectacular fiasco of feathers & wax.
STEPHANIE L. HARPER
“What a Patriot Dreams” was first published (in slightly different form) in the November 2018 issue of CatheXis Northwest — thank you to editor C. M. Tollefson for selecting this piece for inclusion in your beautiful journal — and appears in my newest chapbook, The Death’s-Head’s Testament, available NOW for pre-sale purchase for the fantastic price of $6.50 per copy (currently slated for release in April 2019)!
CLICK THIS LINK to my author page at Main Street Rag, which includes commentary on and sample poems from The Death’s-Head’s-Testament, to order your copy today, that the poetry gods shall smile on you for all the rest of your days!!
Pre-Publication Order Link to Robert Okaji’s New Chapbook
Our favorite poet, Robert Okaji, is truly at his finest in this “luminous” collection! Order his must-read chapbook today!
The publication date for I Have a Bird to Whistle (7 Palinodes) is February 25, and Luminous Press is currently offering copies for $7.50, shipping included, to U.S. addresses, through the 24th. Unfortunately, Luminous doesn’t ship internationally, but I will take care of those orders myself.
Order link for U.S. shipping addresses.
Contact me at aBirdtoWhistle@yahoo.com for orders to be shipped outside the U.S.
Painted Chickens
Painted Chickens
Twenty years ago
I received a birthday gift
from a close college buddy-slash-sometime lover
(What on earth were we thinking?).
Back then, our past was already in the past
& twenty-four was already not young.
He gave me a coffee mug
covered in chickens—
yes, painted chickens—
three plump specimens posed around the outside,
& one that looks like an index finger
with an eye, a comb, a beak, & a wattle,
slapped onto the bottom.
How, I can’t fathom,
but my friend knew that those chickens
with their orange-red, expressionistic bodies
would be a boat-floater for me—
the one time I had slept with him
had been an epic shipwreck,
with a silent drive to the airport in its wake;
on the way, we choked down pancakes,
& I stifled sobs in my coffee,
averting my eyes
from the helpless horror in his.
I then flew off into the wild, wide sky,
bewildered, drowning.
Somehow, for years to come,
his southern gentlemanly charms
still served to allure:
he kept his promise to write
& took pains to catalogue for me
the details of his worldly escapades
& various, accompanying sexual conquests,
always making sure to emphasize
the ways in which they were hot for him,
so as to prove those trysts’ relative rightness.
Then, years later, for my birthday,
came the unexplainably gratifying
chicken cup.
Still burning hot
& feathered in their chili-pepper red,
royal purple & verdant green cloaks,
my static & impossibly happy
aphrodisiac chickens
blush like lovers on a Grecian urn;
clucking, urgent.
My southern gent,
now so long ago flown from this callous coop,
wooed another & had his own brood,
as, in due course, did I,
but the mug, no worse for wear, remains
a spectacular feature—
like a bright birthday piñata
(with its promise of sweet reward)—
of my sacred morning ritual.
These chickens,
still ecstatically surprised,
letting out unabashed, open-beaked caterwauls,
adorn my most aged & prized coffee mug;
a vessel, perfectly-sized,
it cups its contents so adoringly,
fiercely,
like an egg enveloping its cache of gold,
as I take privileged sips.
The big chicken on the left
might actually be a rooster,
& that one on the bottom,
a middle finger.
STEPHANIE L. HARPER
“Painted Chickens” appears in my new chapbook, The Death’s-Head’s Testament, scheduled for release in March 2019. If you like what you’ve seen so far, please take advantage of Main Street Rag Publishing Company’s fantastic pre-order sales offer of $6.50 per copy while it lasts, and feel great about your generous support of this enormously grateful poet!
Place your order HERE today!
On Robert Okaji’s I Have a Bird to Whistle
I had the great honor and privilege of previewing and writing the following blurb for the back cover of Robert Okaji’s newest chapbook, I Have a Bird to Whistle (Luminous Press):
In I Have a Bird to Whistle, Robert Okaji masterfully constructs a universe of incisively beautiful sensory observations, in which the poet lives at the crux—owns and revels in the “life energy” of the “liminal”—between “unshuttered” stimuli and the “concealed” truth of existence. Here, where every ray of light shed on an otherwise “transitory” moment celebrates the gift of consciousness, and every deviation from expectation substantiates the self-actualizing force of human will, the language of poetry—of colors, sounds, and symbols—circumscribes our very being, as it drives our search for meaning. As nuanced as they are bold and delectable, these poems are utterly human, and utterly divine!
– Stephanie L. Harper, author of This Being Done and The Death’s-Head’s Testament.
In short, this is a reading experience like no other, that you simply don’t want to miss!
U.S. Residents can purchase I Have a Bird to Whistle HERE for the fantastic price of $7.50/copy, shipping included. Non-U.S. purchasers can order directly from Robert by emailing aBirdtoWhistle@yahoo.com.
Concerning the Delay of My Self-Immolation
Concerning the Delay of My Self-Immolation
“Ich kenne nichts Ärmeres
Unter der Sonn’, als euch Götter!”
_______________~ J. W. von Goethe’s “Prometheus”
when i sacrifice myself
as a gift to my fellow humans
i promise it will be for nothing
so hackneyed as to protest
some hypoxic septuagenarian
hunched on a mountaintop
mistaking every garish tendril
to wisp from his head
for a well-honed lightning bolt
not that i imagine
there’s any portion of my no-longer-
combustible flesh i might set
upon the balance that could be
tendered for passage to Elysium
but you can believe i’d pluck my own eyes
from their conceding sockets send
the fabrics from my padded scaffold back
to China & traipse forever a blind
naked-as-a-mole-rat gnome in the garden of
unscented flowers if the stygian prophecies
were to divine any semblance of purpose
in chaining my corpse to the cliff face
& though these desiccating seasons
have yet to assemble
me into fuel for Helios’ pyre
if ever my splitting spurs should cease
to cry out dragon’s blood
i will crescendo
my twilight’s fury on the horizon—
my flames will soar
like an eagle on a Titan’s breath
STEPHANIE L. HARPER
“Concerning the Delay of My Self-Immolation” made its debut appearance in Robert Penick’s fabulous literary journal, Ristau: A Journal of Being, in January 2019. It also appears in my new chapbook, The Death’s-Head’s Testament, scheduled for release in March 2019! Please check out sample poems and early praise for this collection on my Author Page at Main Street Rag, and consider purchasing a copy at the terrific limited-time discount of $6.50!
I wish I had words to express how much your support of my work means to me. Please just enjoy the poems, and know that I’m immensely grateful!
Live Feed from the SW Florida Eagle Cam
Live Feed from the SW Florida Eagle Cam
For E9, Born December 31, 2016
1.
Everything
must first have been
a nameless billowing
in the silent house
of before until its voice
yolk-forged could wrest
a pyroclastic mouth
sufficient to speak birth’s
dialect of brokenness
2.
I watched the possibility of you
cradled sixty feet high in a Slash Pine
become a five-day-old
white fluff-bundle of spunk
& open-beaked ferocity You
command the ripping impulse
that strips off the fish’s silver skin
midriff to tail with one swift
grip & flexion exposing
the host’s fleshy glisten
of lipid-pink life to be flaked
& held to your tiny maw’s tip
3.
Before this feeding I think
nothing had yet been born
whose name was Tenderness—
no one to bring this warmth
of tastes & swallows growing ever
heavier in your belly & on your lids
to bear you to your imperative sleep:
Dream Little One in the haven
of your father’s stalwart breast!
Dream of wings outstretched
on the azure’s salt-breath!
STEPHANIE L. HARPER
“Live Feed from the SW Florida Eagle Cam” was first published in the Winter 2017 issue of The Ibis Head Review, and appears in my first chapbook, THIS BEING DONE. If you enjoy my poetry on this blog, you might also consider checking out my newest chapbook, THE DEATH’S-HEAD’S TESTAMENT, scheduled for release by Main Street Rag in March 2019, and available for pre-order sales NOW for a huge discount at $6.50 per copy!
I’M SO VERY GRATEFUL TO OUR COMMUNITY ON WORDPRESS FOR ALL YOUR AMAZING FEEDBACK, SUPPORT, AND FRIENDSHIP! MY LIFE AND MY POETRY WOULDN’T BE THE SAME WITHOUT YOU!
*I’ve been following parents extraordinaire, Harriet and M-15, and their gorgeous eaglets for three seasons now. Check out the stupendous progress being made minute to minute by this year’s little dinosaur siblings, E12 and E13 on the SW Florida Eagle Cam!
SLHARPERPOETRY 